Intermediate Japanese Learning with Dazai Osamu

せる and させる are auxiliary verbs that can extend a variety of meaning to a word. You’re likely familiar with these meanings, so let’s focus mostly on structure and allow meaning to drip out as we move forward.

As we tackle these, we’ll begin each breakdown with a stripped down sentence absent of an auxiliary. Then show you how the sentence evolves with the addition of せる or させる. We’ll continue with this same formula of using a stripped down sentence first, then rolling through with different renditions of the same sentence as we teach this lesson.

Now, in our last lesson we spoke a bit about transitive and intransitive verbs… so, we know transitive verbs require an object, and intransitive verbs don’t require an object. Neither one of these sentences we just covered has an object…, and they’re both complete ideas, so we know we’re dealing with a verb that… (in these sentences, at least), is

What made あつむ cry? And, maybe the answer that came back would be something like:

When it comes to grammar, when one thing causes another thing to happen, we call that “the causative.”

Or, more accurately せた.., because the action being described took place in the past. That addition allows the previously intransitive 泣くto now act like a transitive verb. That’s the power we acquire when appending せる or させる to our main verb.

In English, we achieve the causative (and thus transitive properties) by adding a causative verb… for example: make, have or get…

…in Japanese, however, we skip the addition of the additional verb, and rely simply on our main verb.

— (cry, in this case)— and…, attach either the auxiliary せる or させる to that main verb to get the causative——setting up the object to receive that transfer of action!

Before we get into our second sentence about the angry Azusa, let’s take a short detour to talk about those instances where you can forgo the addition of せる or させる altogether and still walk away with a causative sentence and a transitive verb.

Well, you likely know that some verbs have both an intransitive and transitive version of themselves—as is precisely the case with the word, cry.

When we encounter such verbs (as we have here), then we have the option of going with either its intransitive self (plus せる) to render it transitive, or its already transitive self… which doesn’t need せる to force it into transitive.

A stripped down intransitive version of おどろく could appear in a sentence about a child being surprised, like this:

And, if we were to get specific about what it was that surprised the child—a loud sound, let’s say—then, in crafting our causative sentence, we’d have the option of writing it as A) the intransitive 驚く + せる or B) the transitive 驚かす

By the way, as we wrap up our little detour here, I want to draw your attention to what we’ve done here, where we’ve created a sentence with something inanimate acting as the subject.

So, this sort of thing… having something inanimate as a subject… isn’t so common in Japanese. And, you’ll really only come in contact with it when hearing or responding to the question of what specifically was the cause of something. You may also see it in print, or use it yourself, when acting as narrator in a book or newspaper.

In English we can get away with having something inanimate as a subject, but the opportunity to do so in Japanese is not so abundantly common. In conversation, Japanese far prefers animate beings as a subject when speaking. Because of this, in a casual conversation with these specific sentences we’d more likely hear, or use something like:

Wow. What’s got her knickers in a twist?! Let’s find out.

We ask: What made her so angry? And, here, the elegance of Japanese grammar plays out once again, giving us:

A subject…, an object…, and a now transitive verb because of the addition of せた. (せた, of course, being the past of せる.)

So, at this point in the lesson we’ve only considered the attachment of せる or させる to an intransitive verb. Are you wondering… can せる or させる attach to a transitive verb?

We can indeed attach せる or させる to a transitive verb. To show you how things play out with verbs that are strictly transitive let’s consider a slightly modified version of Dazai’s sentence:

(Because we want to talk about someone else causing another person do something, and we’re dealing with the strictly transitive verb, LEARN, then we have to add せる to that verb in order to communicate this idea of Sōbe being the cause of Shizuko taking up painting.)

Structurally, it’s kinda cool too, because when we do this, we end up with a subject, TWO objects and a verb.

So that’s it.